THE \OICE OF THE INNOdENT IILOOD. 
 
 TREACHED IN THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C, 
 
 NATIONAL THANKSGIVING DAY, 
 
 Noveixiljer 3r>, 1880, 
 
 BV THE PASTOR, 
 
 REY. Jr E. RANKIjS^, D. D. 
 
 \V A S H 1 N (j Ti> N, I) . C . 
 
 aiUSON BROTHKRS, I'RINTKKS. 
 1880. 
 
EI hu^ 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 TO THE LOYAL MEN AND WOMEN IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL 
 
 WHO, FOR THE ELEVEN YEARS OF HIS PASTORATE, 
 
 HAVE SAID TO THEIR PASTOR, 
 
 'THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. 
 
THE A'OICE OF THE INNOCENT BLOOD. 
 
 "And the Lord said unto Cain, Wlnit bns thou done/ The voice of thy 
 brother's blood critth nuto nie from the ground." — Oen., iv, 10. 
 
 TlicM'e is no better incthod of showing onr gnititnde to God, 
 for what He has made this nation, than by trying to realize our 
 highest possibilities. This is tlie noblest Te Deum, wliich wi' can 
 offer Mini tliis Thanksgiving inoi-ning. God's stan(Uirds are per- 
 feet for nations as well as men. AV^e struggle np one height, and 
 we think we have reached tlie very summit of Ilis purpctses and 
 of our (i])])()i'tunities. We want a chaiiee to rest and luok tlie 
 landscape <»ver, foi-getting that God's commandment is always, 
 ''Come up higher!" "There renuuneth a rest for the people of 
 God." But there is no rest for them here. When one good 
 thing has l»een done, it has only prepared the way for the next 
 thing which God would have done. . Tt is God's ste})piiig-stoiie 
 upward, and we are to plant our feet upon it and mount.. 
 
 There are people win* will gather in their houses of worsliip, 
 wlu> will gather in their ()wn homes, this 25th day of November, 
 comfortaltle and self-complacent, thankful in their way, and forget 
 that on the second day of Novenil>cr, wlicii this great free nation 
 wei-e invited to select theii" Chief Magistrate, to exercise their 
 highest act of suffrage, there were multitudes of their fellow-citi- 
 zens to whom \'oting was a farce; to whom the l)a]lot-l)ox was a 
 delusion :iiid a lie; who had no moi'c \oice in this selection than 
 if they had been in the Africa of their fathei-s. Why was tliis^ 
 It was not because, in the day of the nation's peril, they were 
 unwilling to don the nation's blue, to buckle <ni the knapsack, 
 and staiiil shoulder to shoulder with their Saxon brothers, till, un- 
 der our "greatest soldier and greatest citizen," who speaks and 
 votes as he fought, the star of the rebellion went down in lught 
 at A})poinattox; they who, till then, had known the nation only 
 through her marshals, authorize(l to seize them and return them 
 to hateful bondatre. We sometimes have marshals of a different 
 
4 THE VOICE OF THE INNOCENT BLOOD. 
 
 complexicjii now.* It was not l)ecause, in spite of their original 
 heathenism, their present ignorance and degradation, they had 
 not the instinct to discern the principles and measures of free- 
 dom; to identify themselves and their fortunes with those wlio 
 had undertaken to fill up that which was Ijehind, in the labors of 
 Hampden and Cromwell, of Thomas Jefferson and Charles Sum- 
 ner; to identify themselves and their fortunes with those who, at 
 the ballot-box, by legislation and constitutional amendment, were 
 supplementing the work of the men who fought and fell at Bull 
 Run and Fair Oaks and Gettysl)urg. It was because of these 
 very facts. 
 
 Four years ago we waited in prayerful suspense for long 
 months to know, not whom the people had selected as Chief 
 Executive, for in many of the States the voice of the peo- 
 ple had been suppressed by violence and blood ; we waited in 
 prayerful suspense to see if the God of our fathers would not 
 provide some way by which the suppressed vote of the people 
 might be uttered here at the nation's capital. Some of you 
 think that the Electoral Commission was the work of the wisest 
 politicians. I do not. It was a pit which God permitted some 
 people to dig, that they might fall into it themselves. It was the 
 gallows which Hainan erected for Mordecai ; but Moi-decai never 
 graced it. It was that he might dangle beneath it himself. It 
 was God's method of giving dead men a voice ; of granting them 
 what they had been denied at the ballot-box ; of showing that the 
 voice of our l)rothers' l)lood had been crying up to Him from the 
 ground, and that He had heard it. 
 
 Four years ago, this very Thanksgiving Day, a sermon was 
 preached in this house from the text : " And they prayed and 
 said, 'Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show 
 w^hether of these two Thou hast chosen,'" on "The Divinity of 
 the Ballot." AVe did not know anything. God knew, and we 
 asked Him to show it. You know how^ our hearts failed us, and 
 how it seemed as though all the results of the war were to be 
 snatched from us by crime and fraud. Then came the Electoral 
 Commission, with its eight to seven, eight to seven, eight to seven; 
 until, on March ith. President Hayes was inaugurated. I see in 
 
 * Frederick Douglass sat just before the speaker. 
 
THK VOK'K oK THK INNOCKNT lU.ool). 5 
 
 that the hand of (lod; of ( )iif wlio had licarcl tht' xoirc of oiir 
 brothers' hh)od. 
 
 TIIK VOK'K OF THE INNOCENT lU>ool), 
 
 this is the subject which L shall tlisciiss to-dtiy. Voii iiave id- 
 ready aiitici])ated it. 
 
 There is no vuiee so pciietratiiii; at the (ronrt (»f Heaven, in 
 the ear of God, as the voice of hlood. J3h)od is life, and life is 
 God's gift. The life-hlood of the eitizen is the life-blood of the 
 nation. There are words uttered by President Lincoln, which 
 have {dniost the dignity and majesty and power of the old He- 
 brew prophets. Did — 
 
 " The sunset of life give him mystical lore, 
 And coming events cast their shadows before ?" 
 
 Take these, for example, from his second inaugural address only 
 a few short weeks ])efore his martyrdom. AVhat M'ords for a 
 State paper! ''If God wills that this war continue until all the 
 wealth piled up l>y the bondman's two hundred and fifty years 
 of unre(|uited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood 
 ch'awn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the 
 sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still must it be 
 said : ' The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous alto- 
 gether." " Until every drop of blood dra^Ani with the lash shall 
 be paid by another drawn with the sword !" These are the words 
 which I want to make emphatic. What an a^^ful exchange we 
 found it. Blood for l)lood ; life for life. It was just what 
 Thomas Jefferson meant when he said of slavery : " I fear for 
 the future of my nation, when I remember that God is just." The 
 sword had drawn its retributive blood in almost every household 
 in the land ; in the households of the great compromisers with 
 slavery, as well as of the great slaveholders. Col. Fletcher 
 Webster, slain on one of the battle-tields of Virginia, had been 
 borne l,)ack and laid beside the dust of the greatest statesman of 
 the land, at Marshlield. This was God's answer to the ridicule of 
 His higher law, of which Mr. Webster had been guilty when he 
 spoke of it at Capon Springs as a law higher than the Blue 
 Ridge — hiijher tlian the tiiiiht of the ea"rle. This was God's re- 
 
6 The Voice of the innocent blood. 
 
 turn to the home of New England's greatest one, of what he in 
 his inajestv had done for the entrenchment of slavery; unwit- 
 tingly, lionestly done, I still believe. 
 
 But this was not enough. There was a man, the liighest of us 
 all; a great-hearted, tender-eyed, patient, suffering one; a man 
 who had come to his work sadly, tremblingly, prayerfully; who 
 had said on his way here to the capital, that if going forward in 
 the cause of fi-eedom requii'ed the shedding of his own heart's 
 blood, he was ready for it ; there was a man whom the nation 
 had been taught to trust and love and revere as its Chief Execu- 
 tive ; it pleased God to take him also, his great work consum- 
 mated, the sword of the rel)ellion surrendered; to take him from 
 the Pisgah height where he only saw the promised land ; to take 
 liim, the nation's twice chosen Head, in the very flush of our vic- 
 tory, \Aath the words of clemency on his lips ; to exact his heart's 
 l)lood, and this was God's word of reply to the men — Northern 
 men — who had put their Executive signature to such enactments 
 as "the Fugitive Slave Bill" and "the Act repealing the Mis- 
 souri Compromise," though the hand of our dead President had 
 been set to the Proclamation of Emancipation. And when that 
 funeral car made its long procession to Illinois, with the nation's 
 greatest men as pall-1 jearers, and the hearts of the whole people — 
 nay, of the whole civilized world — following it as mourners, we 
 knew the full meaning of Mr. Lincoln's prophetic words. It was 
 the Avenger of blood at the Executive Mansion. His sword had 
 smitten low our liighest one. 
 
 " O captain, my caiitain, our fearful trip is done, 
 The ship has weathered every rock, the prize we sought is won ; 
 The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all are cheering, 
 While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grandly nearing. 
 But, O heart I heart I heart ! 
 
 O the bleeding drops of red. 
 Where, on the deck, my captain lies. 
 Fallen, cold and dead I 
 
 " O cai^tain, my captain, rise up and hear the bells ; 
 Rise up, for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle swells, 
 For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores are yearning. 
 For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning. 
 Here, Captain ! dear father ! 
 
 This arm beneath your head ; 
 
 It is some dream, that on deck, 
 
 You've fallen, cold and dead ! 
 
 " My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; 
 My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will ; 
 
THK vorcK (»K riiK innocknt lii.oon. 7 
 
 Tht» Khip is anchored Knfe and sound, its voyftK*' closed and done ; 
 From fearful trip tlic victor sliij) comes in with olijei^t won. 
 Exnlt, O shores I and rin^,', () bells! 
 
 But I, with mournful treiid. 
 Walk the deck my captain lies — 
 Fallen, cold and dead I" 
 
 The Mosaic systnii, iiotwitlistandiiii:: soiiio mistakes into wliidi 
 Mr. Iiigersoll thinks its aiithoi- fell, was wonderful for its liuinan- 
 ity, atul in no particulai- nioiv than in the value it ]»uts upon hu- 
 man life. For, the more valualth- human life, the more eveiy 
 man's riirhts will he respceted ; the hetter every individual man 
 will he treated hy his fellow. Turn, now, to the 2l8t chapter of 
 Deuteronomy, and you will tind this record: "If one he found 
 slain in the land whi(.'h the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess 
 it, lying in the field, and it he not known who hatli slain hhn, 
 then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall 
 measure the cities which ai-e i-i>un(l alM)ut him that is slain; and 
 it shall he that the city which is next unto the slain man, even the 
 elders of that t-itv, shall take a heifer which hath not heen wrought 
 with, and which hath not drawTi in the yoke, and the elders of 
 that city shall hring d(twn the heifer unto a rough yalley which 
 is neither eared nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer's neck in 
 that yalley. And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near. 
 (What had they to do with politics?) For them the Lord thy 
 G(»d hath chosen to minister unto Ilim, and to hless in the name 
 of the Lord; and hy their word shall every controversy and 
 every stroke to tried. And all the elders of that city that are 
 next unto the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer 
 that is heheaded in the valley; and they shall answer and say, 
 ' Oiu- hands haye not shed this hlood, neither have our eyes seen 
 it. Be merciful, O Lord, unto thy people Israel, whom thou 
 hast redeemed, and lay not innocent hlood unto thy people of Is- 
 rael's charge.' And the hlood shall he forgiven them. So shalt 
 thou put away the guilt of innocent hl(K)d from among vou.'' 
 
 Notice, here, that God held the civil government of the city 
 nearest the spot where the dead man was found, responsihle ft>r 
 the deed ; under ohligation to make inquisition for this hlood-stain 
 upon the land which the Lord their God had given them. The 
 rulers were to proclaim their own innocence and their ignorance of 
 the author of the crime, washing their hands over the heifer lie- 
 
8 THE VOICE OF THE INNOCENT BLOOD. 
 
 headed. They were then to offer prayer to God for forgiveness. 
 Tills was the old Mosaic ritual. What is the ritual of the United 
 States Government i Do you think God's regard for the 1>lood of 
 the slain — of a man made in His own image — was a thing confined 
 to the Old Dispensation ? Do you think He has ceased to listen 
 to the vijice which cries up from the ground when one of His 
 creatures is killed? Do you think He is ignorant that there are 
 thirteen volumes of United States legislative documents tilled 
 with the outrages perpetrated 1)y the Ku-Klux organizations of 
 the South, simply t(j suppress what General Hancock elegantly 
 calls "nigger domination ?"" 
 
 General Phil Sheridan reported to the President that oificial 
 records show that in nine years, from 1866 to 1875, thirty-five 
 hundi-ed persons, mostly colored, were murdered in the State of 
 Louisiana; twelve hundred on account of their political senti- 
 ments — that is, because they voted as their instinct taught them. 
 
 I am aware that, aside from political questions, hmnan life is 
 far less secure in the Southern States than anywhere else in the 
 Union. I believe it is one of the fruits of the depreciation of 
 humanity resulting from slavery itself. In his recent work, 
 "Homicide North and South," Mr. H. V. Redfield, correspondent 
 of the Cincinnati Cornniercial^ a man who has made the sul>ject 
 a careful study, wdio is not a partisan and writes in no partisan 
 spirit, says this: "Upon a close investigation of this sul)ject it is 
 found (1) that the number of homicides in the Southern States is 
 proportionately greater than in any country on earth, the popula- 
 tion of which is rated as civilized ; and (2) that the nmiiber of 
 homicides since the war reaches the enormous aggregate of at 
 least forty thousand. Taking Texas, Kentucky, and South Caro- 
 lina as average States, and the year 1878 as an average year, the 
 mnnber is fully fifty thousand. In Texas, during that year, there 
 were more homicides than in the ten States of Maine, Kew 
 Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
 Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota, with an aggregate popu- 
 lation of nearly, if not quite, seventeen millions. In Kentucky, 
 the same year, moi-e than in the eight States of Maine, New 
 Hampshire, Yermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
 Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, with an aggregate population of 
 
THK V(t[('K oK I'lIK IXXoCKNI" MI.ooD. \f 
 
 iicnrlv tt'ii millions. And in South (';ii-o]in;i, tli;it vc;ir, niorc tlmii 
 in the eii;-ht States of i\[ainc', New Hampshire, \'ermont, Massachu- 
 setts, Rhode Island, Coimecticut, Michiii-an, and Afinnesota, with 
 an aggregate poj)ulat ion of aliout six million^."* ( >r, if von pre- 
 fer, take this language from a Governor of Kentucky, hefoi-e the 
 war. It is in his animal message to the legislatui-e, and (pioted 
 l>y Mr. Sunmei- in his speech on " 'J'he Bai'harism of Slavery:" 
 "Men slaughter each i>ther with almost perfect impunity. A 
 species of connnou law has grown up in Kentucky, which, were 
 it written down, would in all civilized countries cause it to be re- 
 christened, in (li'i'ision, the Land of IJlood." 
 
 Now, let it be miderstt)od, in such counnunities as these, that 
 the lives oi a few innocent colored men, or the life of a single 
 intluential white man, like Judge Chisolm, of Mississippi, stands 
 between a candidate and his election as Governor, or to the House 
 of Representatives, or to the United States Senate, or the Presi- 
 dential chair, and they are l>rushed away as so many dead iiies, 
 or heaped up in piles like so many dead dogs. It was this fact, 
 which, in 1875, led to the framing of the bill for "The Security 
 of Elections," sometimes called by its enemies "The Force Bill.'' 
 It was a l)ill making the forcilile invasion of another State 
 felony, punishalde by a tine of not exceeding SlO,0()0; making 
 conspiracy to overthrow a State government })unishable l>y a tine 
 of from $500 to $5,000; the use of tire-arms at or near the place 
 of election of United States otticers a crime punishable by a tine 
 of from $500 to $5,000; the neglect to give opportunity to 
 register, punishable by a tine of $500 to $1,000; destruction or 
 'mutilation of ballots, by a tine of $500 to $3,000 and imprison- 
 ment from 2 to 5 years. If, in the attempt to connnit any of the 
 al)ove crimes, nnu'der happened, it was murder in the first degree, 
 ])uni>lial)le Ity death. I'nited States district courts were to have 
 exclusive jurisdiction of such cases ; United States su})ervisors of 
 election were to be :i})])ointed in each county, as now in the large 
 cities, and deputy ]nar>]ials in i-ach Congressional district, in 
 whose presence the votes wei-e to be counted; ballots and poll- 
 lists were to be kept until the clo.-^e of the tirst session of Con- 
 gress after the election, the custodian being liable to a subpoena 
 to produce the origin:il at the national capital; and, tinally, 
 
10 THE VOICE OF THE INNOCENT BLOOD. 
 
 when the State authorities were in complicity with armed efforts 
 to overthrow the rights of the people at the l)allot-box, the Presi- 
 dent was given power, temporarily, to suspend tlie writ of haheas 
 corpus. All fair and equitable, it would seem. 
 
 This, for substance, was the bill as originally dra^\Ti. Its 
 failure to pass in season for action in the Senate was largely at- 
 tributed to the Kepublican leaders of the House, who, by their 
 speeches and by their personal eiforts on the floor, did much to 
 control the result. The time had come for milder measures. 
 The commercial spirit demanded them ; and in the near perspective 
 arose the Executive Mansion, and possil )ly this bill might make 
 easy a third term. The failure to pass this bill, and thus to pro- 
 tect the colored voters of the South, temporarily turned over the 
 Government to the men who had sought to destroy it in the 
 field, giving them an apparent majority in Ijoth the House and 
 Senate, and almost giving them the Chief Executive. But it 
 also so alienated the deserted South that when one of the same 
 great leaders of the House looked for their votes in two Presiden- 
 tial Conventions these votes were denied him ; and no man can 
 say wrongfully so, though I believe the prevalent sentiment of 
 the North was as much at fault as he was.* 
 
 Now, I charge that this Government, in its legislative and ex- 
 ecutive departments, knowing the perils which surrounded the 
 colored voters of the South, basely deserted its own citizens, nay, 
 its own constituents, to the most inhuman outrages. I charge 
 that not one man nominally elected to House or Senate, through 
 peril to the life and liml) of a majority of such citizens, was, or 
 is, entitled to his seat. And it was within tlie province of these 
 bodies, judging of the qualifications of their own members, to 
 say so, and to remand the question back again to the people, un- 
 til a fair election took place, rather than have men sit there whose 
 olficial robes were stained with the blood of the innocent ; ay, to 
 hold those seats vacant until such a result was reached, if it were 
 till doomsday, when God himself would take their case in hand ! 
 And, l)y not doing so, I charge that they became accessory to 
 the crimes by which such men as Hampton and Butler and Chal- 
 
 * One Member of Congress said : " The North never will believe there is hell 
 down there, \intil the South prove it. " 
 
THK VdlCK (IF TIIK INNOCKNT I!I,o(»n. 11 
 
 mers sfcURMl a pri hki fdclc Aw'ww t<> their scats. 'I'liis is the jmli;-- 
 iiKMit of" strict justici' ; tlic jiidii-iiiciit of (iod, and I liclicvc, also, 
 it should he jud^niont of historv. 
 
 After the Tlianksgiving scriiioii ])rcaclic<l in tlii> Imu-c in ls7<), 
 the author received u hmi? k'tter of thanks — \\\v letter was more 
 eight pages, foolscap — fi-oin ex-Scnatoi- TiMUiian C. JSinith, of C'on- 
 necticut, a venerahlc man now nmrc tlian eighty years old ; a 
 man who stood side hy sidi' with Daniel Wehster in the great 
 discussions of his Senatorial })eriod. lu this letter he thus. writes: 
 "When we consider h(»w many citizens of our country were re- 
 morselessly put til death, and others ciMielly lacerated, fm- no other 
 reason than that, being of African descent, they proposed to ex- 
 ercise their rights as such; and when we consider, fui-ther, how 
 many there are who make themselves accessories after the fact to 
 such horrid wickedness by rejoicing in party success thus ob- 
 tained, we may well treml>le, when we recollect that God is just, 
 and is as sure to punish wicked nations in time as wicked men in 
 eternity, unless Itoth one and the other rejxMit." These are nut 
 the words of an Orthodox minister ; they are the Words of an ex- 
 Senator of the United States. Now, my sense of justice leads 
 me to apply the phrase, accessories after the fact, not meridy "to 
 those who rejoice in party success thus ol^tained," but to every 
 citizen of these United States who has not lifted up his voice 
 against this great iniquity, and especially to every distinguished 
 citizen, from the Presidential chair down, who, during the last 
 four years, has been silent upon this subject. 1 cannot forget 
 that our present Chief Executive, much as his Administration has 
 done — Pro^'idential, as I believe it ; much as he, by virtue of his 
 Constitutional piiwer to prevent vicious legislation, has himself 
 done, in the interest of free elections — tlid yet take his seat by 
 the votes of thousands of men who imperilled their lives for the 
 cause he represented ; did yet take his seat in the Presidential 
 chair, and then turn them over to the tender mercies of candidates 
 whose competitors were as fairly elected as was he. 1 do not be- 
 lieve there was any bargain, but 1 believe there was an amicable 
 understanding. 1 believe that the voice of history w^ill be that 
 if Rutherford B. Hayes was elected President t>f these United 
 States, Chamberlin was elected Governor of South Car^ilina and 
 Packard, Governor of Lcniisiana. 
 
12 THE VOICE OF The innocent blood. 
 
 There is nothing more disgraceful to the General Government 
 than its impassive submission to these outrages upon its citizens. 
 I am ashamed of such a Government. Kespected and honored 
 abr(md, it is almost despised at home. An American, a mission- 
 ary of the American Board, is killed l>y Turkish l)anditti, and it 
 is telegraphed all over the world as something l)y which the civ- 
 ilization of the whole world is shocked, and forthwith a triljunal 
 is created, at the instance of the Turkish Government, over which 
 the American minister to Turkey — our new Postmaster-General — 
 presides, and the guilty men are brought to punishment. But 
 let the missionary be in the employ of the American Missionary 
 Association, and the murder be committed in Georgia or Ala- 
 bama — especially let him be a colored man — and the whole mat- 
 ter is tamely hushed up, lest any resentment of it, or retaliation 
 for it, provoke greater outrages still. The telegraph does not 
 declare it ; the civilized world has no knowledge of it. We have 
 only to take up his body and bury it, and go and tell Jesus, as 
 did the disciples of the behteaded John the Baptist. 
 
 But will it be any better in the future ? It is safe to trust in 
 God that it will. There is a man who said at Arlington, on Me- 
 morial Day, 1868, beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, 
 who though dead — aye! hecaiise dead — were witnesses: "Those 
 who carried the war for the Union and equal and uni^■ersal free- 
 dom to a victorious issue, can never safely relax their vigilance 
 until the ideas for which they fought have become eml)odied in 
 the endurino- forms of indi\'idual and national life." Did they 
 relax their vigilance when they voted against the Force Bill? 
 These ideas are in our constitutional amendments ; but they are not 
 in our individual and national life. And again, the same eloquent 
 voice said, on the same occasion : " Peace from the shock of bat- 
 tle, the higher peace of our streets, our homes, of our ecpial rights, 
 we must secure, l)y making the conquering ideas of the war every- 
 where dominant and permanent."' "• The conquering ideas of the 
 war," how l)eautifully he expresses it ! This to the dead witnesses 
 at Arlington. Living witnesses surged around him in the metro- 
 politan city of the nation — an earnest of the great uprising in 
 November — when he said other words in the same noble strain : 
 " Anotber thing we will renieml>er. — (Yes, and we will remem])er 
 
THK VOICK OK PHK lNN(i("KNT 1!I,(H»I>. 13 
 
 who said this.) — Wv will ri'incmhi'i- our lilack allies who foiij^ht for 
 U8. Soon after the <;'re!it strii^-^le l)ei;-aii we looke(l heiiiiKJ tlie arniy 
 of white rchels and saw 4,(»00,i)(i(> of Idack ])eo])]e (MMideiiined to 
 toil as shives for our eiieinies, and we fonn<l that the heai'ts of 
 these people were (Tod-insj)ii-ed witli the spirit of liherty, and 
 that they were our friends. — (Where should we he to-day had tliey 
 heen our enemies?) — We have seen white men i)etray the tiair; 
 hut in all that long, dreary war we never saw a traitor in a hlack 
 skin. ( )ui' prisoners escaping from the starvation of pi-isons — flee- 
 ing to ()ur lines ])y the light of the North star — never feare(l to enter 
 the hlack man's caltin and ask foi- l>i'ead. — (ihit t'oi- hread we have 
 given the hlaek man a stone!) — In all that period of suffering and 
 danger, no Union soldii'r w;is ever lietrayed hy a hlaek man or 
 hlaek woman. — (Who Itetrayed the colored men of South Caro- 
 lina and Louisiana;!) — And now that we have made them free, 
 so long its we live we will stand hy these hlaek allies. — (How did 
 some of us vote on the passage of the Force Bill i') — We will 
 stand hy tliem until the sun of liherty, fixed in the firmament of 
 our Constitution, shall shine with ecpial ray upon every man, 
 hlack or white, throughout the TTnion."" True; words; no))le 
 words. Were they mere rhetoric, like apples of Sodom, fair to 
 the eye, hut dust and ashes in the mouth i' The man whose great 
 heart prompted them, whose warm lips'uttered them, if he will 
 havi' the courage of his convictions; if he can put them into the 
 individual and national lii'e of tlu^ American people, as (-iod and 
 the American people now give him a chance to do; if he will 
 use his large knowledge of men and measures, his magnetism of 
 person and of speech ; his grand statesman-like po\ver to do this, 
 we will write his name under and near the name of tlie martyi-ed 
 Lincoln, next to that of Ulysses S. (-rraiit. 
 
 He himself has said: "Ahraham Lincoln was one of the few 
 great rulers whose wisdom inci-eased with his power, and whose 
 spirit grew gentler and tentlerer as his triumphs were nudtiplied." 
 We ask this second Ahram to take pattern after the first, and we 
 will no longei" call him Ahi-am, father exalted, hut Ahraham, 
 father of a great nndtitude! 
 
 I know that every time we get a new President we are inspired 
 with fresh hope that the consummation is at last attained; we 
 
14 THE VOICE OF THE INNOCENT IJLOOD. 
 
 have found the wisdom and statesmanship we need. Even after 
 the death of Abraham Lincohi, we did not -ask, "Can any good 
 thing come out of Nazareth ?" "We were willing to take what 
 good there was in Andy Johnson, and verily believed him the 
 Joshua of that Moses we had lost. Brief delusion ! He prom- 
 ised to make treason odious. But it was something else which 
 he made odious. To quote agfun from the maxims of the Presi- 
 dent-elect : "Nothing is more uncertain than the result of one 
 throw; few things are more certain than the result of many 
 throws." Presidential throws ? We have just made one. 
 Through Lincoln and Johnson and Grant and Hayes, the 
 great movement of God's providence, uplifting a nation of 
 bondmen, like a new world, from the great deep of civil 
 strife, and the paciiication, the settling down to the walks of in- 
 dustry and peace, of discordant elements, have gone slowly for- 
 ward. Reactions have come. We have just j-ecovered from one 
 at this time. The vessel has just righted again, and is ready to 
 take the wind, every stitch of canvas spread. It remains to l)e 
 seen whether this new king of men, which we have found among 
 the people ; walking among us recognized, but still uncrowned, 
 when he steps on deck, will rise to the dignity of the occasion; 
 will take the helm of the Ship of State as a master ; \vi\\ dare to 
 look with unblenched eyfe into the eye of the sun of universal 
 lil)erty; will make his observations in the time to come, as so 
 often in time past, from those hea^'ens where serenely blaze the 
 constellations of the fathers, and will at last, by the voice of a 
 generous people, be set there among them. This is our hope ; 
 this is our faith. For this hope, for this faith, w^e thank God to- 
 day. God l)less James Abram Garfield, the President-elect of the 
 American Republic! God strengthen him by His might, in the 
 outer and inner man ! Long live the United States of America ! 
 And, as for you and me, let us make this covenant again: 
 
 We will not faint or falter now, 
 
 Though other toils there are ; 
 We lift to Heaven au unblenched brow, 
 
 And thus we solemn swear : 
 
 Man's wrongs we still will right them, 
 
 Man's burdens, help him bear : 
 Man's foes, we still will tight them, 
 
 And make his cause our care. 
 
TlIK VOICK OF lili-: INMXK.NT |!|.(m.|>. 
 
 Millions for this have shed their l.lood. 
 
 In evory a^'o iillicd ; 
 Shall wf not keep tho cniise still ^'ood 
 
 For which the niarlyrs died ? 
 
 The sun has seen on many a fiehl 
 The flag man loved go down ; 
 
 And yet his cause, with hlood thus sealed, 
 Has won at last the crown. 
 
 When God incarnate came to earth. 
 And stooped to save the race. 
 
 He wrote in hlood man's native worth, 
 And died to make him place. 
 
 So long as God shall give us life, 
 Fresh toils we will not spare ; 
 
 Whate'er the field, the same the strife. 
 The same the vow we swear : 
 
 Man's wrongs, we still will right them. 
 
 Man's burdens, help him l)ear ; 
 Man's foes, we still will fight them. 
 
 And make his cause our care .' 
 
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